Nuts for Nut Rolls

Days 77 and 78

Ahh, the comforts of home.

The third and final buffet group presented its week's worth of hard work today. The theme was Croatia, and I was a happy camper: Several of the dishes reminded me of food I grew up eating. (I'm half Slovenian—the country of Slovenia is adjacent to Croatia and has very similar food—and the rest of my ethnic background is Italian, Irish and Polish.)

One dish in particular—potica—was especially meaningful. The first bite of the nut roll brought me back to Christmas in Cleveland when my Grandma Mary was alive. She would make it every year; if there was any left, we'd take it home and dunk it in coffee in the morning. The potica made for the buffet was awesome. Thank you, mom, for sending the recipe, and thank you, chef and a good friend (you know who you are) for trying your hands at a family favorite. Grandma would be proud.

I was obviously thrilled about the potica, but I was also psyched to work with rabbits. The butchering comprised the entire day. The first half, I deboned them and used Activa—also known as transglutaminase "meat glue"—to roll the rabbit into a sausage-like shape. During the second half of the day, I broke the rabbits into several pieces, including front and rear legs, tenderloins and the smallest rack of ribs you've ever seen. Butchering took up most of the day yesterday as well; I removed the legs and breasts from ducks.

I really racked up some butchering practice this week.

Pasta Manana

Day 66

Buffet No. 2, check.

Today, my group knocked out a last-minute pasta buffet. It was pretty awesome, if I might say so myself. In a few hours time, we made fresh cavatelli with an oxtail ragu and chanterelle mushrooms; truffled mac 'n' cheese; orecchiette with broccoli rabe and white anchovies; linguini with rock shrimp; fresh gnocchi with peas and proscuitto; and fresh butternut squash-filled ravioli with a sage cream sauce.

I hope we can bring our "A" game to family meal as well. Tomorrow starts the new rotation with a menu of roast beef, potatoes gratin and roasted Brussels sprouts. What's not to love about this meal?

On the way home from class, I found myself standing in front of Dean & Deluca's ice cream freezer. I picked up a pint of Salty Caramel from Jeni's—the most amazing ice cream maker, located in Columbus, Ohio—to surprise Ryan. At $11, it was the most I've ever spent for that amount of ice cream at a grocery.

Now, that's amore.

Caribbean Cruisin'

Days 64 and 65

We made it.

A week's worth of planning, and my buffet team presented a smorgasbord—as in 30-plus dishes—to the school today. It appeared we won over the crowd with our Caribbean theme, considering the platters were basically empty when all was said and done.

It was rewarding to hear compliments from chefs and fellow students. I think what impressed them most was the fact that we pumped so much food out of such a small kitchen. (I'm pretty sure the buffet kitchen isn't much bigger than my apartment's bedroom.)

Dishes included oxtail stew, whole-roasted suckling pig, quesillo (a version of coconut flan), callaloo, guava-and-mango-glazed short ribs, crab cakes with coconut curry, codfish balls with tamarind sauce, jerk chicken kabobs with red currant sauce, curry-crusted rack of lamb, and many, many more. We also presented our charcuterie dishes as part of the mandatory assignment; the dishes included foie gras, a duck terrine with pistachios and head cheese.

I loved experimenting with food that's "new" to me: I've never cooked oxtail or octopus—or a suckling pig for that matter—and I've never tasted soursop. (It was an amazing fruit, by the way.)

On Monday, I'll have one more day of buffet, and then I'm moving on to family meal. Should be fun. I've heard the chef heading the section is great, so I'm looking forward to working with new talent.

Until then, I'm going to close my eyes and dream of the Caribbean's blue and green water and gently crashing waves...